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Directed by - Aamir Khan, Amol Gupte
Produced by Aamir Khan& Kiran Rao
Written by Amole Gupte (also Creative Director)
Starring Darsheel Safary
Aamir Khan
Tisca Chopra
Vipin Sharma
Sachet Engineer
Tanay Chheda
M.K. Raina
Music by Shankar- Ehsaan-Loy
Lyrics: Prasoon Joshi
Cinematography Setu
Editing by Deepa Bhatia (also concept and research)
Distributed by Aamir Khan Productions (India - film)
UTV Home Entertainment(India - DVD)
Walt Disney Company Home Entertainment (International - DVD)
Release date(s)Theaters:21 December 2007 India DVD: 25 July 2008 Disney DVD:12
January
 ˜

'ÿTaare Zameen Par· is about a little boy, or a little flower that has been nipped so
many times in the bud that it begins to wilt. But then comes the gardener, the man
who lets, and helps, the bud to flower fully.

'Ishaan Awasthi (Darsheel Safary), an 8 year old child, is different from all the other
kids of his age.

'He is busy looking at dogs, fishes, colourful things etc and painting while the world
around him is busy buried in their own work.

'He had failed in Std 3 and there was no improvement in him. His family consisted
of his mother Maya (Tisca Chopra), Nandkishor (Vipin Sharma) and Yohaan (Sachet
Engineer) who are all fed up of him.

' After repeated complaints, Ishaan·s father decided to admit him in a boarding school
so that he·ll learn discipline there and become a studious and obedient boy.

'There his life remain unchanged and plus, he had to bear the trauma of separation
from his family.
'Slowly, he became an introvert and stopped talking as no one understood him.

'One day, a new art teacher came to their school, Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Aamir
Khan).

'An enjoyable and cheerful man, he was not like the rest of the ÿdisciplined· types
teacher.

'He loved and taught his students to enjoy life and to bring out their emotions by
painting.

' He spotted the sad, scared and lonely Ishaan and decided to help him.

' This film describes the relationship between a student and a teacher.
 ISHAAN AWASTI
'He is an eight-year-old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to
appreciate; colours, fish, dogs and kites are just not important in the world of adults,
who are much more interested in things like homework, marks and neatness.

' His father, and teacher·s used to humiliate him saying ÿduffer· and ÿidiot·, he
remains the laugh stock of the class.

'He also lacks motor coordination skills and finds it difficult to throw a ball in a
straight line
' He has a passion for painting but no one understands and appreciates it.

' It is not his concentration but the disability to read letters. Neither his parents,
teachers and classmates understood. This is one of the reason that his presence of
mind was not in class but was always wandering outside the class.
' His disability to read and write diverted his attention outside he class.

Ishaan is like Calvin, from the comic strip, whose hyperactive imagination helps him
negotiate the tedious everydayness of daily life.
' Ishaan transforms into a character like (Calvin·s alter ego) Spaceman Spiff upon
encountering a pesky math problem, clearly convinced that the only way to tackle
multiplication is by hopping into a spaceship.

' He has one of the most open faces you·ve seen, without a trace of artifice in it,
and he carries the film with hardly any dialogues, merely with close-up after
affecting close-up.
' He bunks the school and experiences the
world himself. A vendor making a ÿgola·,
the stray dog, the drop of paint on his face,
the sea, the sight of poor children playing -
is there a sense of beauty and curiosity in
these that an adult is unable to see or
comprehend? That·s what we see through the
eyes of Ishaan and through the lens of
Aamir Khan.

' Always at the back of his class, he is

sent to a boarding school by his parents to
be ÿdisciplined· which is, oddly, its biggest
strength as well as the beginning of its
undoing.

' Things are no different at his new school

and Ishaan has to contend with the added
trauma of separation from his family.
 MOTHER ² SON RELATIONSHIP
 In the earlier half, Ishaan·s mother comes across as a genuine presence in her son·s life.
When he roughs up a kid and breaks a neighbour·s flower pots, his father slaps him,
but his mother kneels down and gently tells him to go and have a shower, after which
she·ll apply Dettol on his wounds.

 He gives her hell in the mornings as she tries to get him ready for school, but just as
she puts him on the bus and just before the bus takes off, she kisses him goodbye.

 Mother cared but did not go beyond this. She never researched and tended to follow her
husbands paradigm of parenting. She did not use her brain creatively.

 She·s endlessly exasperated by Ishaan, but she loves him endlessly too ² even if,
strangely, there·s little protest from her when her husband announces that he·s sending
Ishaan to boarding school ² and it leaves a huge vacuum on screen, and in Ishaan·s life,
when she practically vanishes during the second half.

In fact he shares a good bonding with his brother and tells him about bunking.

It is to Ishaan·s credit to that inspite of beating, he never discloses that it is his brother
who has written the leave application for bunking.
 The song called ÿMAA· deserves special mention because of revelation of a son·s
dilemma in absence of his mother.
 STEREOTYPE FATHER Duty of he
 Father belonged to the old school of parenting- ´ Spare the rod
and spoil the childµ OR Beat them into ´ shapeµ. parents
 the first meeting of Ram with Ishan fathers when the father
should be
says Is talent ka kya faida ? to be with
The teacher Ram comments
ÿSarre unglian ek jaise nahin hoti- ungli ko keech ke barabar their
bana do chahe ungli toot kyon na jaaye·.
children in
 Strong, silent , unfeeling and in control.
 Blames mother for all the ills-patriarchal attitude
their
Takes unilateral decisions
They are not strong with the outside world
developing
-Ishaan·s father is a typical stereotype father age; laps
-beats Ishaan ²calling names- idiot, duffer and slaps/beats
him. are more
Blames/pile on the mother ²·Puja karo iski·
Cannot face the neighbours aggressive attitude on important
threatening and complaining; all his machismo is on his
family while he is very courteous/polite with the neighbours
than
laptops
 How the father emotional blackmails him by Empthasize
saying that I am leaving home and going away.
 Ishaan is shocked and pleads not to leave him with the
and promises to study harder and do his
homework. child- point
 The father still do not react and it is the mother
who could not bear and blurts out that father is
the mistake
going on official tour.
 As parent very few tries to understand .
and not the
 Compare the reaction of Youhana and Ishaan 's child.
father on the issue of Ishaan ÿs bunking classes.
 Youhana is not judgemental and ask why did For example
you bunk. Where did you go?
 Even when the neighbour·s are complaining the say that the
elder brother is the one who tries to intervene but
told to shut up by the father.
mistake is
While the father just screams , shout and start bad not the
hitting him.
 The story Amir Khan told that in Soloman child is
Island if the farmers want to cut a tree they abuse,
curse and call names and in few days the tree dies bad«
on its own makes him weep.
WHY WAS NIKUMBH SIR DIFFERENT?
He ´reallyµ cared- and then acted with his heart and brain both.
Nikumbh Sir :
-Actually looked and observed
-Listened deeply
-Tried very hard to see -find the cause for the ´ bad ´ symptoms
-Used intelligence and creativity and not just old methods to solve the problem
-Researched the problem

 Compare the teaching of the other teachers with Ram teaching.

 Ask the students to use their imagination, self discovery and imagination

 Does not react to difference/accepts it and explores it-not set format

 Does not scold Ishaan even when he has not drawing/painting anything

 Motivated them with appropriate role models- Einstien, Edison, and Abhishek Bachchan.
 Ideal teacher goes out of the way to take responsibility for a child.

How Amir Khan observes, investigates enquire from his friend and go out of his way to
meet Ishaan parents.

He argues with the Principal takes onus and extra effort to train Ishaan and then
organizes the art competition.

 Nikumbh recognized the inner potential of Ishaan ²remember telling the boarding
school principal ²see his such bold use of colours and strokes.

 His comment that ·patri se hat ker kitne bcachche chal pate hain ·.

We look around Praveen Kumar , Irfan -cricketers , if had listened to their parents then
instead of being successful would be anonymously doing some common job ... etc. and
most important would be very unhappy and frustrated.
 Ultimate responsibility of every teacher and parent is to discover and nurture the inner
potential of the child.
TEACHER ² STUDENT RELATIONSHIP
' Towards the end, there·s a moment when Ishaan climbs down a few stairs and he
stumbles just as he nears Nikumbh, who ² of course ² steadies the child.

' It·s the capping-off visual metaphor for their relationship, one that·s somewhat
like the relationship between Rani Mukerji and Amitabh Bachchan in the
melodramatic Black, another story about a student with a handicap and a teacher
with radical ideas. But where that film was heavily stylised and impossible to read
at a real level ² if you had an engagement with it at all, it was at a hyper-emotional
level, for nothing in it resembled anything around us ² Taare Zameen Paris set in
a world that·s recognisably lived-in.

' There comes an art mela where Ram organizes a painting competition between
teachers and students and the Ishaan wins the same over Ram and regains his self
confidence.

' Beautiful simplicity of this plot of the film has then been detailed in a series of
interesting episodes. The movie is made of some beautiful scenes, which adds up to
making these episodes beautiful.
 ROLE OF THE TEACHERS
 The teachers are expected to teach students sensitively but look at their cruelty.

 They call out the marks publicly humiliating students and affecting their
selfesteem.

 They do not listen to the children but abuses ,humilate and beat the students-he is
called medhak, moorkh shiromani, lazy idiot , duffer.

 Look at the words they use-kuch bachche badnaseeb hote hain and Koi keh nahi
sekta yeh Youhana ka bhai hai

 Look at the situation of Ishaan when his parents are called to discuss him in the
principal loffice he is standing in the corner while the teachers ar epiling on saying
jann bhoojh ke karta hai.

 Even the principal of the boarding school sighs with relief when he is told that Ishan
has dyslexia that he has got the perfect excuse to throw him out.

 Every one of the teachers at boarding school is an offensive cartoon painted in the
broadest of strokes, and cruel too ² like the instructor who raps Ishaan on the
knuckles with a wooden ruler. Aamir, by contrast, laughs and sings and clowns
around (literally; his entry into the film is in a clown suit).
Ishaan·s father is so insensitive to his children·s needs that he can·t handle
something as small as the elder son losing a tennis match.

Aamir, by contrast, is so sensitive, he cries at the mere sight of children.

He sees differently-abled kids perform in an Annual Day celebration ² and his eyes
well up with tears. He sees a kid mopping up tables at a roadside eatery ² and his eyes
well up with tears.

He sees Ishaan·s paintings ² and his eyes well up with tears.

It·s no wonder that, at some point during his visit to Ishaan·s house, he asks for a
glass of water; you·re not surprised, considering his constant loss of fluids.
2009
AWARDS
Apsara Film & Television Producers Guild Awards
Won: Best Movie - Aamir Khan (Producer)
Won: Best Director - Aamir Khan
Won: Best Screenplay - Amole Gupte
Won: Best Lyrics - Prasoon Joshi - Maa
Won: Best Male Playback Singer- Shankar Mahadevan- Maa
Won: Best Story - Amole Gupte
Won: Best Special Effects - Vaibhav Kumaresh, Dhimant Vyas

National Film Awards (for year 2007)

Won: Best Film on Family Welfare
Won: Best Lyrics: Prasoon Joshi
Won: Best Male Playback Singer - Shankar Mahadevan - Maa
2008

Filmfare Awards
Won:Best Movie- Aamir Khan (producer)
Won:Best Director - Aamir Khan
Won:Best Story - Amole Gupte
Won: Critics Award Best Performance - Darsheel Safary
Won: Best Lyricist - Prasoon Joshi
2008
Filmfare Awards
Won:Best Movie- Aamir Khan(producer)
Won:Best Director - Aamir Khan
Won:Best Story - Amole Gupte
Won: Critics Award Best Performance - Darsheel Safary
Won: Best Lyricist - Prasoon Joshi

V. Shantaram Awards
Won:Best Film (Gold)
Won:Best Director (Silver) - Aamir Khan
Won:Best Actor in a lead role - Darsheel Safary
Won:Best Writer - Amole Gupte

V. Shantaram Awards
Won:Best Film (Gold)
Won:Best Director (Silver) - Aamir Khan
Won:Best Actor in a lead role - Darsheel Safary
Won:Best Writer - Amole Gupte
THANK YOU

MADE BY-

DIVYA THUKRAL